A new report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition finds social media companies are not doing enough to combat climate disinformation, which has outperformed science-based content across platforms over the past 18 months. “The failure to stem mis- and disinformation online has allowed junk science, climate delayism, and attacks on climate figures to become mainstreamed,” the authors concluded.
Michael Khoo, co-chair of the Climate Disinformation Coalition at Friends of the Earth U.S., emphasized that “governments must require social media companies to be transparent and accountable about the harms their products create, as they do with every other industry from airlines to cars to food processing.” Twitter carried the most false content by volume, while Facebook drove more exposure to climate disinformation than exposure to its own Climate Science Center. The study also found Facebook’s fact-checking policies to be severely under-enforced. (Protocol, Guardian, Newsweek, The Hill, Common Dreams)